Of Fatherhood and Hugs
by Chase Yuy
Summary: After 3 beats, Heero and Chase have taken Marimaea Khushranada in as their daughter. A little talk between the new father and daughter and a look into Heero's past. R&R. I'm an addict. Seriously. Feed it.


**Of Fatherhood and Hugs**

A/N: My my, this has gotten much longer that I ever meant for it to be. And it's time for me to go to bed… Good grief, this is what happens when I haven't written in a while. Anyway, for those of you that will actually read this authors note, this is your **_WARNING_**: this is along the same lines of Anna-chan's and my Gundam Wing stories, and follows the Three Beats of War, Peace, and Revolution story plot, which is an AU to Time and Time Again. Chase-chan and Anna-chan are mentioned in this, but never actually how their faces, but just thought I'd warn you so I don't get a 'what the crap is this!' message… I'm sure I will, but ah well. I shall laugh at flames. Then burn them, b/c that's what flames do. They burn.

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The kitchen was quiet, with the exception of the clock hanging on the wall, the steady typing on a laptop keyboard, and the slowing scratches of a pencil against the paper. A foot began to tap on the wooden floor, causing the second occupant of the room to look up, slight irritation written in his dark eyes.

Marimaea Kushranada grimaced at the harsh look. "Heero-nii-san?" she ventured.

"Not now, Mari," the pilot murmured, back to work.

The young teen looked back to her work. It had been two months since she had come to live in the Gundam pilots' cabin home. She'd taken residence on the more recently added second floor that had been built for Jack and any other (hopeful) children that might come of the two marriages within the household and the many visitors that seemed to never find anything other than a couch in the library to sleep on. It had been Quatre that finally made the adjustment, upset by Zechs' lighthearted remark that the books received equal if not better treatment than the guests in the Gundam house.

As soon as Mari had become an official member of the household she'd been swept up by Anna Maxwell's eager attempts at a schooling program. "It'll be easier that way, with as much as we move around," Anna had said. Much to Anna's chagrin, Marimaea proved to be a perfect student without any tutorage from the elder pilot and had quickly put an end to her short lived teaching career.

Heero felt the younger girl's eyes trained back on him and he looked up from his work. "What is it Mari-chan?" he asked in a strained voice.

"I didn't say anything," she responded with a huff.

"It's more what you do not say that is deafening," the Japanese man answered with a sigh.

"You've been working hard, Heero-nii. Has there been another threat comeup?"

Heero shook his head. "No, and that's why I've been so busy. Une-sama's all but put me behind a desk job, without even giving me a desk to do it at."

"Is it my fault?"

Heero blinked. "Why would it be your fault?"

"Une-sama didn't have time to take care of me… You and Chase-nee-chan took me in, and now Une-sama hasn't given you any away work. It seems… to coincide."

"I have a family now," Heero mused. "I suppose I should be more careful."

"You had a family with Chase-nee," Mari pointed out.

"Yes, but not a child."

"I'm not a child," Mari said suddenly, with feeling. "I can take care of myself. I did so for a long time. I can run an entire army if asked to! Une-sama should not take away your freedom to feel better about the situation if she would not do it for herself. I could come with you if you taught me to fight."

"We've been over this, Mari-chan," Heero murmured. "You're too young."

"I'm nearly fourteen! How old were you and Chase-nee?"

"That's not important."

"Yes it is! How old, Heero-nii-san?"

Heero resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he closed his laptop down. He knew he wasn't getting away from this. "I was fifteen, but very different from you. I was trained as a soldier from a very young age."

"Chase-nee wasn't though. She said that she came from a 'normal family with school, two parents, and a dog,'" Mari said, mocking Chase's hand motions as she spoke. "That's more than I had!"

"You had a loving mother, and a father that would have…" Heero stopped himself.

Mari smiled. "Would he have? I truly don't know… I was a mistake, after all."

"Mari-chan…"

"Was your father a soldier, Heero-nii-san? You never speak of him. Nor your mama. Did you have them? Did you know them? You never speak of yourself before you met the other Gundam pilots. You don't have amnesia like Trowa-san, do you?"

Heero nearly laughed at this. "No. I remember it all very well, and have learned more than I ever should have."

"Will you tell me about your father?" the young girl asked as she leaned her chin against her hands and propped herself up in that way. "Or your mother! Tell me about your mama! Was she like Chase-nee-chan? They say men marry their mothers and women marry their fathers!"

"Is that what they say?"

"Yes! Was she like Chase-nee?"

"I don't remember well. I was four when she died."

Mari's face changed for excited to saddened. "Was she sick?"

"At heart."

"What does that mean?"

Heero sighed as he tried to pull his thoughts together to explain it to the young teen. "The man she loved wasn't who she thought he was, I suppose."

"Was that your father?"

"I believe so, yes."

"Did he not say?"

"No, he never would."

"But you knew him?"

"He raised me for four years after my mother's death."

"Till you were eight."

"Yes."

"But he never said he was your father… How did you know?"

"It all makes sense, when you piece everything together."

"You're not going to tell me why, are you?" the young girl asked with a smirk.

At this, Heero laughed. "I'm tempted, but it's something that only Chase-chan knows."

"Not even Duo-san knows?"

"Duo doesn't know as much as that loudmouth thinks he does," Heero grumbled.

"It's good to be able to trust your best friend though."

Heero smiled. "Mari-chan, I would trust Duo with my life. If I were ever in danger and could not get myself out of it, Duo would be there. And I for him. It's how we've always worked, but I would not trust him with secrets that could… soil the names of those dead."

"But you told Chase-nee. She has a loud mouth too."

"Don't let her catch you saying that, but Chase is different. We're married, and with marriage comes trust of all sorts. It's part of being a family. And she's never broken her vow of silence about my past."

"Well… Since I'm part of your family now, Heero-nii, can you trust me that way too?"

Heero watched Treize Khushranada's daughter for a moment. It was hard to believe, he thought, how far she'd come in the past five years from the mislead eight-year-old that was ready to kill him and everyone he cared for. Now she was his daughter, not Treize's. His and Chase's very own child. "Alright," he agreed. "You ready for a long story?"

"Yes!"

"And you promise not to say a word about this to anyone? You may only speak about it to Chase and I, and only in private."

"Agreed."

"You may not tell a soul."

"I understand, Heero-nii."

"Not even that stray dog that you and Chase have been feeding behind my back."

Mari blushed and grinned all that the same time. No fooling Heero-nii-san. "Not even Snowy."

"Good heavens… You named the damn thing. We'll never be rid of it."

"The story, Heero-nii! I swear! On my life, if that's what it takes! Just tell me!"

Heero shifted, stood, and started for the door. "Let's take a walk."

Marimaea huffed her annoyance as she followed and frowned at Heero's smile. "Now?" she asked when they reached the outdoors.

He nodded. "I didn't actually meet my father until I was four, when my mother died. She kept me from him. I never really knew why. I remember asking once or twice towards the end of her life and it only made her look sad, so I didn't ask again.

"I don't remember much about her personality other than that she was always sad. She cried often."

"Was she beautiful?"

"Yes. Traditional Japanese beauty. If she had been born in a different time, she could have been a geisha. Do you know what that is?"

"Yes. The pretty women that dance that you see on really old pictures? With white faces!"

"Hai," Heero whispered. "She always wore a traditional kimono and tied her hair up. Her eyes were dark.

"I remember sitting on the chair outside her room because the doctors wouldn't let me in. I knew she was dead. They wouldn't have had to tell me, I just knew it. As I was sitting there a man walked up and said my name. I nodded and looked up at him. I'd seen his face in a picture I'd found once, I don't know how I pieced that together, but I did.

"'I'm a friend of your mama's,' he told me, 'and you're supposed to come with me now.' He held his hand out for me and I took it. I had his eyes."

"Your father!" Mari squealed.

"Who's telling this story, hmm?"

"Go on."

"As perceptive as you are, yes, he was, but I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know it until… three years ago, maybe? I pieced the information together."

"What was his name?"

"Odin Lowe."

Marimaea's eyes widened. "The man that killed the politician Heero Yuy!"

"One in the same."

"He was your father?"

"Yes."

"Was he a bad man?"

"No," Heero murmured. "He regretted what he did, and I think it haunted him until his death."

"I'm not sure that my father was a horrible man," Marimaea said thoughtfully. My mother was so loving that there had to have been something good in him."

"He wanted good things, but went about them in the wrong way," Heero answered.

"Does that make him bad?"

"That makes his actions bad."

"Oh… So what happened next?"

"I stayed with him for four years and he taught me what it was to be an assassin. At the end of those four years he told me I was to go and be a normal child. He died that day. Someone shot him. I never found out who."

"So do you know what he did to cause your mama to be sick at heart?"

"He killed her father."

Crystal blue eyes widened. "Then her father was…?"

"My mother's name was Aya Yuy."

"I see," the young teen murmured as they reached the small pond just out from the cabin. She stared into it with a distant look in her clear eyes. "And this information, would soil his name? Your grandfather's, I mean?"

"To have a Gundam pilot for a grandson? Yes. A pacifist and a soldier."

"But you fought for peace, Heero. You still fight for peace. Without the soldiers, the world would have fallen long ago and we would have had no peace. We would not even know what it would look like. It's those like you that protect the peace and that make it possible to be a pacifist!" She stopped and looked at him. "Anyway, it's impossible to be a total pacifist. Even Relena-san has something she'll fight for. And Milliardo-san, he's certainly no pacifist, though his name would make it seem as if he should be."

"That's true," Heero murmured. "You're a very bright girl, Marimaea."

"Thank you," she said with a smile. "Even saying all that I have, you should know that your secret is safe with me."

"Of course. I never questioned that."

"Heero-nii? May I ask one more favor?"

"What's that, Mari-chan?"

The girl paused for a moment. "Will you hug me?" she asked quietly. "Chase-nee hugs me, but you don't… I know that sounds funny, and I know… Chase-nee says that that is just how you are… That you don't know how… sometimes… to express… but will you? I never got to hug my father."

Heero stared a moment, unsure of what to do. He had had four years to become accustom to Chase's love and to understand it, but he had had only two months to understand what it was to be a father to a child who had lost her own before she'd even known him. He took a tentative step forward, reaching one hand out to her. Before he knew what had happened, Marimaea had flung herself into him, arms wrapped tightly around his torso. He hugged her back, very slowly.

"I never cried for him," Mari whispered. Grandfather wouldn't let me when he took me in and I found out who he was and everything. I was sad. Who wouldn't be, to find their father and find out that he was already dead?" She pulled back, tears building in her crystal blue eyes. "Let's make a deal, Heero-nii, okay?"

"What's that, Mari-chan?"

"That we will always remind each other… that it's okay to grieve those we love, even if it's many years later."

Heero smiled down at her and pulled her back into an embrace. "Alright, Mari-chan. It's a deal. Now, I think that Catherine was here a while ago and I know that has to be cookies that I can smell from here."

Mari's eyes lit up and he motioned for her to go on ahead of him. She grinned and raced off towards the cabin, leaving the Perfect Soldier to his thoughts on fatherhood and hugs.


End file.
